Trees, like all other living things, need food, water and nutrients to survive. Trees produce their own food through photosynthesis, using energy from sunlight, water (from roots) and carbon dioxide (from air) to create sugar that is used to feed the rest of the tree. Like all plants, pine trees need the basic ingredients of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to survive. Without these ingredients, photosynthesis could not occur and pine would not survive.
With these ingredients, pine is able to convert sunlight into energy and produce vegetable sugars, which are essential for the plant's survival. Also important are the nutrients that are absorbed from the soil by the roots of a growing tree. Plants have specific needs (light, air, water, nutrients and space) to survive and reproduce. Here's the trick, there's only so much sun, water, and nutrients available in a given space, and the trees present in that area have to compete for those resources.
Usually, a young tree is the size of a tree that grows in a commercial nursery to be transplanted into your garden. If a tree is never harvested, over time it will continue to provide many other benefits, but it will eventually begin to decline. But, you might ask, what happens to the water inside the trees? Won't it freeze and damage trees as if water pipes burst in a house? It is true that trees, like other living things, contain a lot of water in their cells. The seedling must compete with other trees and plants for its share of nutrients, water, sunlight and space.
A large part of the tree trunk consists of dead cells and not useless cells, as they still help with certain functions such as sap flow to keep the tree alive during the warmer months. The bottom line is that trees can survive by allowing dead cells to freeze and by keeping living cells thawed. For the life cycle to be completed, external and internal conditions must be favorable for the tree. Because they cannot be uprooted and migrate south to warmer customers, such as certain animals, trees enter a dormant state similar to the hibernation of snakes, bees, skunks, bears, and bats (to name a few).
A narrow growth ring may be the result of drought, competition with other trees for nutrients and sunlight, or other factors. A chemical called abscisic acid is released, which tells the leaves to come off so that trees don't waste energy to keep them alive during the winter. Most trees spread or scatter their fruits around this time, so they plant seeds nearby for reproduction. These stresses affect the tree making it more susceptible to insects and diseases, and eventually succumbs to a causative agent or competing pressures from other plants adjacent to the tree that grow more vigorously.
The inner bark or phloem carries synthesized food from the leaves to the cambium layer and other growing parts of the tree. But during the winter, since energy and nutrient needs are much lower, dead cells can freeze without harmful effects on the tree itself. This concept is important to you as an owner, especially if you are interested in specific trees.
